After many millennia of the archetypal hero and patriarch, men and women today are ready for other models of masculine energy. A unique group of fairy tales offer such an alternative. Focused on mature men, these folktales come from around the world and share a common theme: they show men at midlife moving to the original archetype of the masculine -- the shaman-Trickster. Visible in art from 30,000 years ago, he personifies the "deep masculine" and emphasizes communication rather than competition, creativity instead of conquest and healing over heroics. He offers a model for mature masculine development and a vision of a post-patriarchal world, with an authentic reconciliation of masculine and feminine.

This introductory lecture provides an overview of the deep masculine.

Allan Chinen, M.D. is a psychiatrist in private practice in San Francisco, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He is the author of numerous books on psychological development, including In the Ever After, Once Upon a Midlife, Beyond the Hero, Waking the World, and coeditor of the Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology.

Saturday, Feb. 28, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m.
The Cooperage, Sonoma State University
$25 Admission
($30 Additional fee for 3 hours CE for psychologists (APA) and therapists (BBSE); registration at the door the morning of the event)
Doors open at 9:30 a.m.
Free parking in Lots J and D

As we trace the evolution of modern thought that brought forth depth psychology at the end of the nineteenth century, and as we follow depth psychology’s own unfolding over the past hundred years, it is not hard to see the outlines of something like a spiritual journey – a collective journey, of the Western mind and soul, affecting each of us individually, and indeed the planet as a whole. In this lecture, Richard Tarnas will explore and try to articulate some central elements in this journey, from the forging of the individual self, reflective but isolated, to a possible awakening of the human self to its embeddedness and co-creative participation in a larger ground of meaning and purpose.

Richard Tarnas, Ph.D. is a professor of philosophy and cultural history at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he founded the graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. He also teaches archetypal studies and depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara. Formerly the director of programs at Esalen Institute, he is the author of The Passion of the Western Mind, a history of the Western world view from the ancient Greek to the postmodern. He frequently lectures at Eranos in Switzerland as well as at various Jung institutes and societies throughout the U.S., and is on the Board of Governors of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. His most recent book, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, received the Book of the Year Prize from the Scientific and Medical Network in the UK.

Dyane Sherwood, Ph.D. Embodied Spirit: The Natural World and the Redemption of the Feminine in Alchemy

Saturday, March 28, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m.
The Cooperage, Sonoma State University
$25 Admission (cash or check)
($30 Additional fee for 3 hours CE for psychologists (APA) and therapists (BBSE); registration at the door the morning of the event)
Doors open at 9:30 a.m.
Free parking in Lots J and D

Jung spent the last half of his career immersed in the study of alchemy, with its symbolic language and images. He was strongly influenced by the renowned and eccentric alchemist and healer, Paracelsus, who spoke of "scintillae" or the tiny points of light contained within the darkness of matter. In this slide-illustrated lecture, I suggest that any psychological transformation in depth must include an engagement with the material world and its mysteries.

This seminar presents images and texts that illuminate the redemption of the feminine and a renewal within a relationship to the natural world, which is a central theme of the medieval European alchemists. In this seminar Dr. Sherwood also speaks briefly about image and symbol formation in light of some exciting new findings in neurobiology. A famous alchemical image, the meeting of the King and Queen, will help us to consider aspects of non-verbal emotional development and communication.

Dyane Sherwood, Ph.D. is an Analyst Member and on the teaching faculty of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, where she is the Editor of Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, an international quarterly published by the University of California Press Journals. She has written about shamanism, initiation and individuation in the Plains Indian vision quest, and the neuroscience of dreaming. She co-authored with the late Joseph L. Henderson Transformation of the Psyche: The Symbolic Alchemy of the Splendor Solis (Routledge, 2003). Her forthcoming book chapters include "Analysis in Training" in Jungian Psychoanalysis and "The Moving Body: What Words Can’t Express" in The Embodied Psyche (Routledge). Her private practice as a licensed psychologist and Jungian analyst is in Woodside, California.

Saturday, April 25, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m.
The Cooperage, Sonoma State University
$25 Admission (cash or check)
($30 Additional fee for 3 hours CE for psychologists (APA) and therapists (BBSE); registration at the door the morning of the event)
Doors open at 9:30 a.m.
Free parking in Lots J and D

The early Alchemists, in their quest to turn lead into gold, observed that the material in their vessels first turned black, and then, over time, white, and finally, red, with yellow as an occasional intermediary stage. It took the scholarship and genius of Dr. Carl Jung to discover that the alchemists were projecting the contents of their own unconscious onto their vessels, and that the gold they were seeking was the quest for what Jung later called the Self. Black, white and red were transformative stages along the way.

The transformative process found in the alchemists’ vessels might also characterize a person’s dreams over an extended period of time. “Black” dreams, “white” dreams and “red” dreams are, indeed, discrete stages in the process of individuation. This presentation explores in depth the psychological meaning behind the colors, referring to dreams and to slide images from art and nature to amplify this exploration into the archetypal depths of Black, White and Red.

Lynne Ehlers, Ph.D. is a Jungian-oriented clinical psychologist in private practice in Berkeley and San Francisco. She is a former associate professor in Dream Studies and Consciousness Studies at John F. Kennedy University, where she taught a series called The Language of the Dream. She also teaches at The Dream Institute and at The Psychotherapy Institute in Berkeley. She is adjunct faculty at Sonoma State University, and extension faculty at JFKU, where she teaches classes in sandplay. She has also studied art history at U.C. Berkeley and at the Asian Art Museum, where she was a docent for many years.

Kelly Bulkeley, Ph.D. "Big" Dreams and the Science of Oneirogenesis

Saturday, Sept. 26, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m.
The Cooperage, Sonoma State University
$20 Admission (cash or check only)
($20 Additional fee for 3 hours CE for psychologists (APA), therapists and social workers (BBS), cash or check only; registration at the door the morning of the event)
Doors open at 9:30 a.m.
Free parking in Lots J and D

This presentation takes recent empirical research on "big” dreams—rare but intensely memorable dreams—as the starting point for deeper theoretical reflections on the nature and functions of dreaming, as well as for oneirogenesis, the origin of dreams. With Jung's clinical insight into the significance of extraordinary dreams providing an initial orientation, the presentation focuses on the latest findings of brain-mind science as they relate to the more unusual aspects of dream phenomenology.

The seminar draws on the fields of psychology, cognitive neuroscience, religious studies, and anthropology, and is guided by a hermeneutic philosophy that counsels healthy skepticism towards scientific claims. Dr. Bulkeley offers an understanding of the origin of dreams by examining the characteristics of “big” dreams and describing a foundational mapping of the prototypical forms of dreaming. This mapping revolves around four common types of “big” dreams: sexual, aggressive, gravitational, and mystical. The presentation discusses the implications of this model in both theoretical and practical terms, and reflects on a science of oneirogenesis.

Kelly Bulkeley, Ph.D. is a Visiting Scholar at the Graduate Theological Union, former President of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, and a prolific author who explores the intersections of religion, psychology, and culture. He is the author of The Wilderness of Dreams; An Introduction to the Psychology of Dreaming; Visions of the Night: Dreams, Religion and Psychology; The Wondering Brain: Thinking about Religion With and Beyond Cognitive Neuroscience; Dreams of Healing: Transforming Nightmares into Visions of Hope; co-author of Dreaming Beyond Death; and editor of Soul, Psyche, Brain: New Directions in the Study of Religion and Brain-Mind Science and Dreams: A Reader on Religious, Cultural and Psychological Dimensions of Dreaming. His newest books are Dreaming in the World’s Religions: A Comparative History; and American Dreamers: What Dreams Tell Us about the Political Psychology of Conservatives, Liberals, and Everyone Else.

Thomas Singer, M.D. Archetype, Initiation, Culture

Saturday, Oct. 17, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m.
The Cooperage, Sonoma State University
$20 Admission (cash or check only)
($20 Additional fee for 3 hours CE for psychologists (APA), therapists and social workers (BBS), cash or check only; registration at the door the morning of the event)
Doors open at 9:30 a.m.
Free parking in Lots J and D

Initiatory rituals are as old as man and are no less relevant today than five thousand years ago. The archetype of initiation expresses itself in many different cultural patterns. Dr. Singer will focus on the archetype of initiation in ancient Greece and modern America. These are themes that he has explored in over forty years of traveling to Greece and long professional association with Dr. Joseph Henderson, who first described the archetype of initiation in his ground breaking study, Thresholds of Initiation.

Thomas Singer, M.D. is a psychiatrist and Jungian analyst whose writing includes articles on Jungian theory, politics and psychology. As co-editor of a new volume, Initiation: The Living Reality of An Archetype, Dr. Singer is part of a group of San Francisco Jungians who have followed in the footsteps of Dr. Henderson's work on this ancient and modern theme. He is co-author of The Cultural Complex: Contemporary Jungian Perspectives on Psyche and Society; and author of The Vision Thing: Myth, Politics and Psyche in the World; A Fan's Guide to Baseball Fever: The Official Medical Reference; and Who's the Patient Here? Portraits of the Young Psychotherapist.

Below, Dr. Singer in the Galapagos.

Gareth Hill, M.S.W., Ph.D. Alchemy and a Model of the Self

Saturday, Nov. 14, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m.
The Cooperage, Sonoma State University
$20 Admission (cash or check only)
($20 Additional fee for 3 hours CE for psychologists (APA), therapists and social workers (BBS), cash or check only; registration at the door the morning of the event)
Doors open at 9:30 a.m.
Free parking in Lots J and D

This seminar presents a model of the Self that the presenter developed in his book Masculine and Feminine: The Natural Flow of Opposites in the Psyche. Dr. Hill relates the masculine and feminine aspects of individuation to an interpretation of the twenty pictures of the medieval alchemical text, the Rosarium Philosophorum. Using C. G. Jung's method, Dr. Hill projects his model onto the Rosarium material, thereby elucidating and amplifying the Rosarium as well as amplifying his model of the Self.

Goals and objectives:

Present the model of the Self and an introduction to alchemy;

Interpret the Arnold of Villanova Rosarium pictures in terms of the model;

Amplify the interpretation by using some of the Mylius version of the Rosarium;

Open speculation about the evolving social and cultural contexts in which the Rosarium materials were created.

Gareth Hill, M.S.W., Ph.D. is a certified Jungian analyst member of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, where he is on the teaching faculty and serves as Chair of the Admissions Committee. He is the author of Masculine and Feminine: The Natural Flow of Opposites in the Psyche, and is a former dean at the Sanville Institute, where he is currently on the faculty. He maintains a private practice in Berkeley.